Looking Ahead to 2018

Brokerage Industry Maintains its Value to Consumers, But Challenges Remain.

(Mountain Lakes, NJ, January 18, 2018) — While doomsayers once expected real estate agents to go
the way of travel agents and full-commission stock
brokers, the business of real estate brokerage has
remained surprisingly unscathed.

In an interview with Real Estate Broker’s Insider,
Lennox Scott, head of John L. Scott Real Estate in
Seattle, notes a looming threat as national portals
such as Zillow look to expand, and as venture
capitalists and Wall Street investors back startup
brokerages such as Compass and TripleMint.

Scott points to Zillow Instant Offers as one wake-up
call for traditional brokers. While the offering has
yet to gain traction, it reveals Zillow’s ambitions
for continued expansion.

"The Instant Offer kind of woke the industry up,"
Scott says. "It is definitely
game on."

Brokers and agents can fight back by stressing what
they’re best at — Scott
calls it the "local advantage" of deep roots in the
communities where they do business.

Each of your agents has dozens or hundreds of
meaningful relationships with buyers and sellers. To
fight off Zillow, he says, agents need to maintain
relationships through regular phone calls and marketing
messages.

"Our industry is not fabulous on keeping in
contact," Scott says. "But the numbers are in our
favor if we do this communication."

The alternative, Scott says, is to simply cede large
portions of the market to Zillow and other portals.